


Integrity

by thedevilchicken



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Barebacking, Bruises, Life-Affirming Sex, M/M, Minor Injuries, Rough Sex, Scars, Spanking, Unnegotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 04:32:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11028699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: He didn't learn to sew because of Bruce.





	Integrity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



He didn't learn to sew because of Bruce.

Alfred had maintained a more than passing acquaintance with a needle and thread for almost as long as he could recall by the time he came into the employ of the Wayne family. He rather thinks it's a skill that everyone should have, even if it's not so very much more than the rudiments thereof - if you can't attach a button to a shirt at the very least without making a complete fiasco out of it then he suspects that life in general must be fraught with at least twice the difficulty you might otherwise encounter, and he's not at all sure that's a gross exaggeration. Sometimes, the little things can count for a very great deal.

Of course, the fact that he was born in a time when things weren't quite so readily replaced might have coloured his perceptions somewhat, as the proper thing when he was younger was to make do and mend, darning holes in socks and affixing discreet patches to worn elbows. And, of course, he wasn't born into a fortune the size of Bruce Wayne's, and he rather pragmatically supposes that the usefulness of a proficiency in needlework is inversely proportionate to one's wealth. Naturally, Bruce has never needed to sew. He has tailors for that, in Italy and on Saville Row, and has the cash on hand to visit them should his _other_ business make the trip convenient. He has Alfred, too, and it's all just part of the service for which he was hired so long ago.

The point is: Alfred didn't learn to sew because of Bruce. But he did learn to _stitch_ because of him. 

Bruce has scars. Alfred occasionally wonders how he explains them to his pretty conquests in their near-impossible cocktail dresses and in his less charitable moments, over a glass of scotch in his room at night, he supposes they don't think to ask the question. If they did, Bruce would likely spin an entertaining yarn about a yachting accident, coral reefs not mixing well with scuba, or perhaps the time he climbed K2, and if he smiled that cocky Bruce Wayne smile, there would be no reason at all for anyone to disbelieve. Alfred, on the other hand, knows precisely when to disbelieve. Alfred, on the other hand, knows the story that lies behind every scar on Bruce's body. From the look of the cut he's returned with tonight, there'll shortly be another one to join them. 

"I know," Bruce says, grimacing as he shakes his head and looks away. He's stripped to the waist and sitting on the examination table in the medical bay, wearing a pair of terrible grey jogging bottoms with tight, elasticated ankles that Alfred can't help but think look remarkably like something a child might have worn in the 1980s. He supposes at least it's not a shell suit, and he's learned to be thankful for small mercies. 

Alfred clucks his tongue and Bruce exhales loudly, verging on a sigh. "I _know_ ," he says again, as Alfred snaps on a pair of gloves as disapprovingly as it's possible to.

"If you knew, there'd be no need for us to have this conversation," Alfred replies. Judging by the shift of Bruce's bare shoulders and the twist of his grimacing mouth, he knows that Alfred's right but isn't particularly inclined to admit it. When Alfred drops the conversation, it's not because he's dropped the sentiment.

He cleans the wound without another word then tears open the sterile suture kit to begin the evening's real work, and when he does, he isn't particularly gentle about it. He used to be, once upon a time. He was almost _too_ gentle the first time, he thinks, concerned as he was that he might do more harm than good, and the faded scar by Bruce's right scapula spells out the gory details of that particular tale. He recalls two rather hamfisted attempts to pull on the gloves - they weren't at all like his familiar pair of Marigolds, though to this day he still can't trust a dishwasher with all the telltale streaks they leave on the good glassware - and how gingerly he held the needle in the forceps. There's likely as much of a scar there as there is because he tried to be so careful. He knows better now. It's as familiar to him as sewing a button on a shirt.

Bruce grips the edge of the table. The cut is moderately superficial, a clean line over Bruce's pectoral muscle barely deep enough to begin to require the stitches, but Alfred stitches it anyway with narrowed eyes and a familiar disapproving glance. He does it slowly, what he supposes could be called meticulously, but they both know very well that the time he takes isn't strictly required as much as it's a very petty fashion of _I told you so_. And when he's done, when he's put down the needle and taped a patch of gauze into place over the stitches, he should do what he's done a hundred times before: he should start the instruments sterilising in the autoclave and dispose of his gloves in the appropriate medical bin sitting there on the counter and that should be that. But it's not, even if he's not entirely sure why that is. 

What he does instead he hasn't done in years: he pulls off his gloves and sets them aside and then he reaches back past Bruce's shoulder with one bare hand, feeling for the scar he knows is there just at his right shoulder blade. He finds it with his fingertips as Bruce looks at him, as Bruce frowns at him, but he knows all of Bruce's looks. He has a catalogue of them inside his head for all the times that others would find him utterly unreadable. After all, he watched him practice half of them, until he didn't need to practice anymore. 

"For God's sake, take off those hideous trousers," Alfred says, and he takes a step back, takes a step away, his hands set on his hips. He can see the fraction of a second's hesitation that Bruce tries hard to hide before he stands, his bare feet on the tiled floor, because it's always there, but he knows why he does it. Bruce pushes his trousers down over his hips and Alfred knows he doesn't hesitate because he has any kind of qualms about this; he hesitates solely because he wants it, and some part of him thinks that he shouldn't, even now. 

He pushes down his trousers and Alfred is far from surprised that he's bare underneath, that once he's tugged the terrible elasticated cuffs away from around his ankles he's left naked from head to toe. Alfred remembers Bruce when he was ten years younger, fifteen, twenty, when there were fewer scars, when his muscles lacked some of their current definition; when this started, when he first put on the very first suit, Bruce was smaller, not small and far from weak but not... _this_. Bruce has changed over the years. Alfred is not so naive as to believe he hasn't changed with him. 

"Don't tell me you've forgotten what to do next," Alfred says, with another cluck of his tongue and the appropriate slow shake of his head. "Perhaps you've had one concussion too many over these past few months. You should really see a doctor."

Bruce scowls, but he turns. He leans down over the examination table, braced low on his forearms, his feet shuffled apart just a significant fraction, and Alfred pauses for a moment, entirely for effect. He pauses, then he steps in close. He pauses, then he runs the back of one hand over the curve of Bruce's bare backside. Bruce knows what to expect; he barely even flinches when the flat of Alfred's hand meets his arse with a resounding slap. 

They've done this before. Each slap of Alfred's hand feels like any of a hundred others, though eighteen months, two years, maybe three, have passed since the last time before. It was after Jason died, and Alfred supposes they're both remembering the night they buried him as he does it, remembering how he spanked him until his hand was sore, until Bruce could hardly sit, without a word at all. Bruce wanted punishment and so Alfred punished him then left him there and went upstairs to ice his hand at the kitchen table. It didn't help either of them, not that time, not like it had before. He doesn't suppose they expected it to.

This time, Alfred knows what to expect. It's not about Jason. It's not about Dick, either, and the idiocy Alfred still believes it was to take on someone so young as an odd kind of vigilante attaché, even if he suspects neither of them could imagine what their lives would have been without Dick's inimitable presence. It's not about Bruce breaking his word, either, because Alfred knows better than to ask that he promise to be careful and expect that will ever happen - Bruce's is not a profession in which care and caution can succeed. He does it because he wants to do it, because he knows that Bruce wants it, because he misses how close they used to be when they were both a little younger. He misses the Bruce that kissed him on the mouth after his first brush with death and left both of them astonished that he'd done it. He misses the Bruce that wanted his approval and not just that he cooperate. He misses the Bruce that still had hope.

He was on the radio with Bruce that first night he almost died and he recalls the dull thud of his heart in his chest when he thought that he'd died, the warm flood of relief in his veins when he realised he hadn't. Bruce has never asked for his blessing and that's perhaps because he knows he could have never given it, seeing how closely he skirts the edge of his life on such a regular basis. And when he returned that night, when he stepped out of the car and pulled off his cowl, Alfred recalls that he gave him a long, hard look so that he needn't say a word to him at all.

Bruce was probably still full to the brim with adrenaline, so perhaps that was why he did it. Perhaps he felt that were he going to die one day in a ridiculous accident - it hadn't even been a criminal that was responsible for Bruce's little brush with death, just a run-of-the-mill equipment failure, a grappling line that failed and sent him plummeting rather rapidly toward the asphalt - then he'd best make sure he had his affairs in order. It was something they'd danced around for several years by then, unacknowledged, of course, but still very much a reality, the particular way he caught Bruce looking at him when he thought he wouldn't notice, the way he'd looked at him since he was young enough for it to make Alfred distinctly uncomfortable, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old. He'd assumed it was a phase that Bruce would grow out of if he just ignored it, born of their necessary proximity; Bruce had grown up, of course, but he'd never outgrown it. He'd learned how to hide it, but there were times, sometimes, every now and then, every once in a while, Bruce fresh from the shower with a towel slung low around his waist, Alfred stripping off his t-shirt in the utility room after a lengthy run, and Bruce's eyes would be on him. 

By that night, Bruce had reached his mid-twenties. He was far from a child, wasn't even a youth, and Alfred knew that, he understood that. Alfred had known that for years, and had been quite uncomfortable in that knowledge. Bruce was taller than him and broader than him and his hands were larger, his limbs longer, his muscles thicker, even then, and Alfred recalls fittings for the components of the very first batsuit, a tape measure in his hands and his fingers on Bruce's bare skin, how his hands almost shook as he noted down the breadth of his shoulders, the circumference of his wrists, his chest, waist and hips and thighs and ankles. He recalls looking up at Bruce from his knees on the bedroom rug, sitting on his heels with a quip right there on the tip of his tongue till his gaze collided with that look on Bruce's face. 

He recalls rising to his feet, recalls how he slipped the measure around Bruce's neck, cinched it tight to make a reading though he likely knew the size of Bruce's collar more readily than Bruce did himself. He recalls how close they were to one another, the heat of Bruce's bare skin that he could feel even through his suit, how Bruce's underwear hid nothing at all of his reaction to it. He recalls how he fled so very carefully to his room immediately afterwards, a studiously measured walk to hide how very flustered it was that he felt, and how he stood there with his back pressed to the door, his head resting heavy against the wood, nails digging hard into his palms. He'd told himself perhaps it would pass, that he could maintain a professional distance, that the attraction he felt was utterly ridiculous, forty-something years old and thinking just how easy it would have been to reach down, rest his hand over the front of Bruce's underwear and squeeze. He could imagine how Bruce's eyes would have widened. He could imagine how his cock would have filled in response.

That night, Bruce pulled off his cowl and he stumbled into him, uncharacteristically uncoordinated, too quickly to catch his breath. Bruce kissed him, his gloved hands on him, his mouth on him, hot and hard, and Alfred pushed him back.

"You could have died," he said. 

"Are you going to say _I told you so_?"

Alfred frowned. "No," he said. "I'm going to remind you that you said you'd try to be careful."

"I tried."

Alfred raised his brows. "Evidently not very hard."

He helped Bruce out of the suit; one of the catches had been very nearly crushed in the fall and it was very clearly a two-man job to get him out of it. And he was bruised underneath, his ribs black and blue, the length of one thigh a rather violent purple, and Alfred tutted as he set aside cape and cowl and boots and gauntlets, as he stripped him out of every inch of the bat, down to his bare feet and underwear. Bruce set his jaw but flinched when Alfred pressed his fingertips into the bruise over his thigh. He grimaced when he pressed his fingers to the bruise over his ribs.

"You promised you'd try to be careful," Alfred said. 

"I did try," Bruce replied, but it sounded like a particularly feeble genre of excuse. 

"Try harder," Alfred said, and tilted Bruce's chin. "Yes?" 

Bruce met his gaze. He nodded. "Yes," he said.

"Don't break your word. You know, integrity does still have some meaning. " 

"I won't."

"Like you didn't tonight?" Bruce scowled. "You know, I'm not convinced that the way to make Gotham a safer place is throwing yourself haphazardly from the top of an apartment building. But if you know something I don't, then by all means continue."

He watched Bruce tense. It was easy to see, so very close to naked as he was, covered up with bruises and the occasional scar just here and there, some newer than others. He remembers reaching back past Bruce's shoulder, running his fingertips over the scar he kew was there, and remembers how Bruce's skin was all goosebumps at his touch. He remembers how Bruce tensed up even further, and how he didn't move away. He remembers making him turn, remembers rubbing the line of that scar with his thumb, remembers running his fingers down the line of Bruce's spine. And he thinks perhaps Bruce wasn't the only one that wasn't thinking straight that evening. He thinks perhaps Bruce wasn't the only one filled to the brim with adrenaline, and with excuses.

"Do you know what happens to people who break their word?" he asked. 

Bruce shivered. Bruce leaned forward against the edge of the examination table, gripping so tight that his knuckles turned white.

"I'm going to guess it's not all cake and ice cream," he replied, his voice not totally steady. 

Alfred chuckled wryly. "I think that's fair to say," he said, toying with the elastic at the waistband of Bruce's underwear. "Society doesn't tend toward rewarding broken promises."

"I don't really care what society would do," Bruce said. He glanced back over his shoulder just for a second before he looked away again. "What would _you_ do?"

"What do you _want_ me to do? What do you think would be fair?"

Bruce didn't reply, or at least he didn't do so verbally. He paused, leaning there against the edge of the table, as if considering the question, and then he reached back with both hands and he slid his underwear down over his hips. He pushed it down, let it drop to the floor and nudged it aside with the outside edge of one bare foot and then he leaned back down, lower this time, attempting to seem nonchalant about it but Alfred could see how his chest rose and fell with the quickness of his breath. 

He knows the right thing to do would have been to walk away, but he also knows he's missed so many _right thing_ s along the way to where he is now as to render _right_ quite meaningless. He should have left Wayne Manor years before. He should have helped Bruce to find a healthier way to deal with his pain. He should have said no so many times and not rationalised that he was an employee there, hired help, and never really Bruce's equal. He should have walked away but, of course, he didn't. He rubbed at the indentation at the lowest edge of Bruce's back with the pad of his thumb, just there by the cleft of his backside. He kneaded his cheeks almost roughly, parted them, rubbed them, slapped with an almighty crack of skin on skin that echoed on the uneven walls till he wasn't sure if it was the feel of it or the sound that made Bruce flinch. Then he rubbed his cheeks again, parted them again, rubbed a circle round the rim of the hole there between them with his thumb. Another slap. He raked his skin with his nails. Another slap. Fingertips slick with saliva rubbing against Bruce's hole. _Another_ slap. 

When he stepped away to retrieve the medical lubricant from the counter, he could see that Bruce was hard. Then another slap. Another. Bruce's cheeks were red. Another slap, then slick fingers slid between his cheeks, slick fingertips stroked against his hole and made it tighten, Alfred's slick thumb pressed against it, flat and blunt, then pressed inside. Bruce was hot and tight and his breath was quick like Alfred's was though they were both feigning detachment. Alfred wasn't detached; he pressed his free hand in between Bruce's shoulder blades and held him down and pushed slick fingers into him, his hand right there in front of his crotch, his hips shifting as he fucked them with them, like they were his own stiff cock in him and not his fingers. He supposed he should have felt ashamed but if he did, it was buried under something else entirely. Bruce had almost died. Shame at showing his relief he hadn't had a place only low on the agenda.

Bruce came like that, making a mess of the table with his muscles straining, pulling tighter and tighter around Alfred's fingers. Twenty minutes later, when Alfred came, he was upstairs in his room behind a locked door, pretending he wasn't thinking about what he wanted to do to Bruce, pretending he wasn't thinking about fucking him, pretending that thought hadn't been there for years. In his defence, he stopped pretending not long after; every time he's touched himself and thought of Bruce over the years since then, he's known better than to lie to himself.

Three weeks later, Bruce nearly died again. They both knew the seriousness of the situation and Bruce didn't try to hide it, not that he could have when he returned the to the manor with two broken fingers and another cut that required stitches, and so Alfred stitched. And afterwards, he said, brows arched, "You promised to be careful."

Bruce nodded. He pushed his underwear down over his hips, careful of his splinted fingers, and so it all began again with the flat of Alfred's hand striking loud against the curve of Bruce's arse; this time, when Bruce shuddered and came leaning down over the table top, Alfred freed his cock and stroked and came over the small of Bruce's back in hot, thick bursts. Bruce looked back over his shoulder and Alfred was appalled at what he'd done but not for long; the look on Bruce's face was surprised, yes, but also dark and full of lust, everything he'd tried to hide for years. Still, that didn't stop him leaving.

"You promised to be careful," Alfred said, two weeks after that, applying butterfly strips over the cuts that he'd just cleaned at Bruce's collarbone. _Catwoman_ , he thought. Alfred has often wondered why their names must be so comical. "This doesn't seem terribly careful to me." 

"It wasn't," Bruce said. "I was reckless."

"I suppose you weren't exactly thinking with your head," Alfred said, more amused than he was jealous, or at least he thought so at the time. But when the wounds were taped and Bruce stripped off his underwear, he unbuckled his own belt and slicked his cock and fucked him with it without a second's hesitation. He had him, his hips snapping smartly, skin to skin, Bruce tight around the length of him. He knew he was far from being Bruce's first but he thought he was the first he'd had that knew him, and when he came in him, when he pulled back out and rubbed his come around the rim of Bruce's hole with the pad of his thumb, with the head of his cock, just to feel him twitch tight against him, the others didn't seem to matter very much at all.

Tonight, as his hand meets Bruce's cheeks with a resounding snap, he remembers all those other times. He remembers late nights and early mornings, sutures, bruises, his hands on Bruce's scars. He remembers watching Bruce touch himself, naked on his knees on the ground, and pretending that he didn't notice as he tidied the already tidy med bay's surfaces - he remembers handing him a cloth to wipe his come off the floor when he was finished, with an arch of one brow and a twist to his mouth. He remembers Bruce stopping him once and going down naked on his knees while he was still fully clothed, how he almost made him stop as he unbuckled his belt and tugged his trousers down over his hips - he remembers Bruce's mouth on him, how he held his shirt out of the way, how Bruce stroked himself as he sucked him and he told himself he didn't wonder where he'd learned that. 

He remembers Bruce calling for him from the bedroom once or twice or more than that, after a particularly heavy night, remembers finding him bound hand and foot with silk ties that he told him ruefully would never be the same again or handcuffs that were, he was sure, actually GCPD standard issue. Once or twice or more than that, he settled between Bruce's thighs on the bed and he fucked him, fully clothed, Bruce's hole already stretched by whoever it was who'd just been there before him. Once or twice, or maybe more than that, he left him there afterwards, he buckled up his belt and left him tied there with his come still up inside him. Bruce has always used condoms; he's watched him sometimes, on the camera Bruce set up inside the bedroom and left for him to find, and so he knows. Alfred hasn't, on the other hand, at least not with him.

He remembers disagreements, bickering, full-blown arguments. He remembers Dick's arrival and then Jason's and how fraught things were from time to time, but still Alfred never left. He remembers how Bruce apparently believed his Batman glare could intimidate him, and how he laughed at that and Bruce just glowered. He remembers near misses, miraculous escapes and then the absolute opposite of that, the losses, finding Bruce in his bed one night not very long after Jason's death and holding him without a word, his chest pressed tight to Bruce's back, an arm around his waist. Bruce thinks he blames him for Jason. He hasn't told him that he's wrong; that's been a more effective punishment than anything else could ever be. One day he'll tell him just how much he regrets it.

It's been a while, he knows that, since that other night, that last night, since he hurt him and this thing that's been between them for quite close now to two decades ground into a halt. It's been a while but tonight he does it because he wants to, because Bruce wants him to, and he isn't surprised when his cock begins to stiffen there inside his trousers. He isn't surprised that Bruce's also hardens more with each fresh slap of the flat of his hand, and it's not slow, there's no pause, Bruce has no time to catch his breath. Bruce doesn't seem surprised when Alfred pauses momentarily, when he unbuckles his belt as quickly as he can, when he runs his hands hard over his hips. Bruce doesn't protest when he doesn't bother finding lubricant, because saliva and pre-come will definitely do. When he pushes into him, quick stop-starts against the friction that take his breath away, still mostly clothed, the muscles in Bruce's back shift and tighten as he fights to make himself relax and let him in. Usually, Bruce has so much restraint. Usually, Bruce has so much control. _Usually_. Not now. God, he's missed this. He's missed _him_. 

Alfred fucks him, fast and hard and deep, his hands gripping tight at Bruce's hips. Bruce strokes himself and pushes back to meet his thrusts and it's fast, it's almost painful, he can feel a prickle of sweat on his brow and his back from the effort it takes but it's worth it. It's like the first time. It's like every other time. Bruce is alive, at least for tonight. He can feel ashamed of it later, but for now all that matters is how much Bruce's life means to him.

And after, when Alfred has tucked himself back in and straightens up his suit, when Bruce has sat himself down gingerly on the edge of the table, Alfred steps in close, between Bruce's parted thighs. He rests one hand over the gauze taped there over Bruce's heart, not particularly gently, like that makes his point. 

"I'd like to ask you to be more careful," he says, with a tap of his fingers. "But somehow I find it staggeringly difficult to believe you will." And Bruce smiles a rueful smile that says he's right. 

Alfred rests his forehead against Bruce's. He closes his eyes. He smiles, wry around the edges.

"Promise it anyway," he says, as he always used to do, even though he knows he shouldn't. 

Bruce wraps his arms around Alfred's waist. "I promise," he says, and it's like he's twenty years younger and not a world-weary forty-something, like there's hope in him again. 

Bruce promises. The day he doesn't, there'll be no promise to break and no punishment to give for it. The day he doesn't, Alfred will know all his hope is truly gone.

Alfred will always be there, until the day he dies - until the day that one of them does, at least. He'll sew and he'll stitch and he'll do what he can in order to assist, he'll learn every skill he needs to learn to be exactly what Bruce needs and not because that's what he's paid for. He'll be there whether Bruce will make that promise or he won't.

But the day he doesn't is the day that this will stop. And perhaps it's true he has other regrets, but that would be the greatest one of all.


End file.
